REVIEW PAPER Recent advances and perspectives in the treatment of hydroponic wastewater: a review Amina Richa . Sami Touil . Meriem Fizir . Vicente Martinez Received: 11 August 2020 / Accepted: 10 October 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020 Abstract Rapid development of hydroponic farm- ing which is soilless cultivation method of growing plant using mineral nutrient solution dissolved in water produces large amount of wastewater rich in nutrients and organic matters thus imposes great harms to human and environment, if the waste nutrient solution is not correctly treated. The objective of this review is to present information concerning hydro- ponic systems, including: the different classes and methods of operation; advantages and drawbacks and the recent approaches and development in hydroponic wastewater treatments. Particular emphasis has been placed on removal of root exudates from reused waste nutrient solution in closed system. The reviewed technologies for nutrient removal or recovery include denitrification, microalgae cultivation, constructed wetlands and activated carbon methods. The alterna- tives byproducts i.e. biogas as agriculture fertilizer for hydroponic cultivation to attain sustainable agricul- ture was further highlighted. In addition, current challenges and future prospects in this field are carried out. About 118 published studies are reviewed in this paper. It is evident from the literature survey articles that activated carbon is the most frequently studied for the nutrient recovery of hydroponic wastewater. Keywords Hydroponic system Á Hydroponic wastewaters Á Organic fertilizers Á Nutrient removal and recovery Á Root exudates 1 Introduction At present, productivity and environmentally friendly are the biggest challenge facing traditional agriculture or soil cultivation because of climate change effects (increases in temperature and extreme weather events) that increase the threats to soil such as reduced soil fertility, presence of disease-causing organisms and nematodes in soil, unfavorable soil compaction, degradation due to erosion, etc. (Surendran et al. 2017; Sengupta and Banerjee 2012). In other hand, the world population is estimated to reach 9–10 billion habitants in 2050 (Souza et al. 2019; Kumar and Cho 2014). Thus, land available for food production will A. Richa (&) Á S. Touil (&) Research Laboratory of Agricultural Production and Sustainable Development of Natural Resources, University of Djilali Bounaama, Khemis Miliana, Algeria e-mail: a.richa@univ-dbkm.dz S. Touil e-mail: s.touil@univ-dbkm.dz M. Fizir (&) Laboratoire de Valorisation des Substances Naturelles, Universite ´ Djilali Bounaa ˆma, Khemis-Miliana, Algeria e-mail: meriem.fizir@univ-dbkm.dz V. Martinez Department of Plant Nutrition, CEBAS-CSIC, Murcia, Spain 123 Rev Environ Sci Biotechnol https://doi.org/10.1007/s11157-020-09555-9